DICK BAYNTON: Have We Become Sidetracked?

On Friday, March 24th, Speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump removed the vote for the new healthcare law from the docket of the U.S. House of Representatives. While Democrats cheered, Republicans considered alternatives including continuation of Obamacare allowing it to collapse from its own flawed composition. This may be considered a major setback for the President that has been in office only a couple months. There have been and will continue to be an almost endless stream of reasons and excuses why the bill did not receive a vote on the floor of the House.

According to the words of the new President, legislation will turn to tax policy with all its tentacles that reach into every level of society; domestic commerce, international trade, employment and welfare. One of the reasons given for attempting to repeal and replace Obamacare was the relationship that the healthcare industry has with taxation. According to several commentators, a healthcare bill could be a product of the taxation policy debate.

One of the serious flaws of the new healthcare law that was pointed out by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is that there would ultimately be about 24 million citizens without insurance. The record shows that as you read this column, there are already 31 million without health insurance. It is a fact of life that there will always be a large number of people on welfare just as there will always be a segment of the population that will be uninsured. Another point worthy of mentioning is the difficulty of leading a population of 325 million people with a national debt of almost $20 trillion, supporting 23.5 million government employees, 21 million veterans, 42.5 million living in poverty and 50 million students in public schools.

The reason that the United States has prospered and survived and thrived for more than 240 years is thought to be the unleashing of the talent of free men and women living under the umbrella of conditions provided by The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Have we become sidetracked by political party loyalty, selfishness, greed, spending beyond our means and the deterioration of our culture (divorce, single parent babies, crime, entitlements, education deficiency, political correctness (PC) and the blame game)?

As the ageless saying goes, ‘time will tell.’ Each party claims the high ground of morality, ethics, honor and all the other exalted adjectives. The truth is that politics is a dishonorable method of arriving at what we would like to believe is honorable government. The way it works is that if a politician prevaricates during the campaign, it is an easy stretch to lie when holding the reins of official government.

Obamacare, an exclusive creation of the Democratic regime of 2010 now experiences premium increases of up to 125%. It took seven years but the present healthcare plan has arrived at a state of unsustainability. The liberal plan was to have Hillary win the Presidency and simply convert Obamacare to single-payer; meaning the government takes over the healthcare program just as it took over the student loan program, also an abject failure.

Let’s look at some facts: Obamacare is not an insurance program; it is the largest wealth redistribution scheme in history. Insurance is a system of like-minded individuals who all make contributions to a pool of funds (premiums) based on the forecasts of actuaries so that the pool managers (the insurance companies) can collect money from participants and distribute funds to members whose homes burned, or had auto accidents or who incurred healthcare expenses (illness, surgery, pregnancy etc.). There has to be enough money left over after distributions to cover the costs of pool managers (insurance companies).

This new Trump administration must look at governing as organic; just as our bodies depend on all organs and openings to operate effectively in concert, government must work, not in the vacuum of singular objectives, but in the overall effectiveness of all branches and agencies for the betterment of the nation at large and its place in this troubled world. Restoring our nation is a generational task we hope to achieve in four years. Liberals: your ‘solutions’ over the past eight years have led to the disasters of detours and dead-ends; please remove your barricades.